=Humanism in the English ‘Grammar’ Schools.=--But the humanism of the ‘grammar’ schools in England, as in Italy and Germany, soon became narrow and formal. The purpose of humanistic education came to be not so much a real training in literature as a practical command of Latin as a means of communication in all lands and ages. Accordingly, the training became one of dictionaries, grammars, and phrase-books. Expressions and selections were culled from authors and treasured in notebooks, and the methods became largely _memoriter_ and passive. The formalism into which the schools of England had thus fallen by the seventeenth century is depicted in Brinsley’s _Ludus literarius: or the Grammar Schoole_, a work intended to ridicule and reform these conditions. It indicates that the training in Latin was devoted to drill in inflecting, parsing, and construing a fixed set of texts. Lily’s _Grammar_ was memorized by the pupils, and references to it were glibly repeated, with little understanding of their meaning. All conversation was based upon some phrase-book, like the _Colloquies_ of Corderius, and a Latin theme had to be ground out each week. [Sidenote: Largely unchanged.] [Sidenote: The great ‘public’ schools.] =English ‘Grammar’ and ‘Public’ Schools To-day.=--Although reforms have since been made in many of these directions, the organization and the formal humanism of the English ‘grammar’ school have been preserved in principle even to this day. Mathematics, modern languages, and sciences have been added, and a ‘modern side’ has been established as an alternate for the old course, but the classics are still the emphasized feature, and, to a large degree, the drill methods prevail. But, while it was originally intended that the grammar schools should, by means of the endowment, be open to rich and poor alike, because of the great increase in expenses, necessary and unnecessary, there are now not many opportunities for any one in the lower classes of society to attend a grammar school. Similarly, a distinction has come to be drawn between ‘grammar’ and ‘public’ schools, although it is not a very clear one. In general, a ‘public school’ has a more aristocratic and wealthier patronage. Nine ‘great public schools’ were recognized by the Clarendon Commission in 1864,--Winchester (Fig. 17), Eton, St. Paul’s, Shrewsbury, Westminster, Rugby, Harrow, Merchant Taylors’, and Charterhouse; but several other old schools and a number of the stronger foundations of Victoria’s reign are generally admitted, and many others claim the dignity of the name that would not be considered eligible outside of the immediate locality. [Sidenote: First American secondary schools modeled after English.]